The present application relates to software and more specifically to user interface designs and methods for graphically displaying and interacting with information and/or concepts.
Software for facilitating information visualization is employed in various demanding applications, including scientific research, digital libraries, data mining, financial data analysis, market studies, manufacturing production control, drug discovery, and so on. Such applications often demand striking displays for illustrating different groups of data and relationships therebetween.
Information visualization may be any process involving graphically representing data according to a method or scheme. A graphical representation of data resulting from an information visualization technique is often called a visualization. Example visualizations include pie charts, treemaps, bar charts, graphs, and so on.
Effective visualization techniques are particularly important for visualizing complex financial data sets, where visually striking and useful displays may improve business operations, economic forecasting, and so on. For the purposes of the present discussion, financial data may be any information pertaining to a business operation or financial transaction(s). Examples of financial data include invoice numbers, business contact records and information, sales data, invoice data, purchase order data, employee data, customer data, supplier data, market data, customer geographical information, cash flow records, and so on.
Conventionally, financial data visualization techniques involve using pie charts, bar charts, graphs, and so on. Use of these techniques is often limited to displaying a single data dimension or hierarchy level. Such limited visualization techniques may inhibit informed decision making.